reliving the past through fashion

Month: November 2014

I have a short off-week this week, which sucks, but I have been working ultra-hard the last three days on my convention costumes. It’s definitely crunch time – I have one more off-week between now and the convention and I’m going to be out of town for two days of that! So I really have to finish all the big pieces this week, and hopefully I can work on the little things during my work week, as I have time – something I really try to avoid doing, but I don’t have a choice anymore.

Two of my sister’s costume picks were Vocaloid – the Camellia one I’ve already covered; the other is Kagamine Rin’s “Reactor” outfit – which is undeniably cute, and I was looking forward to making.

I dedicated Friday to working on the dress. Which, as usual, I tackled in a fairly stupid way.

I may have mentioned before, my “day job” is actually a night job – I work third shift on a week-on week-off schedule. The big pro of this is that I get a solid chunk of time to work on costumes on my off-week. The big con is that I am not a daytime person, and it’s extremely hard to force myself into a daytime schedule on days off, which usually results in a constant state of exhaustion and me doing dumb things and making a lot of mistakes that could be avoided.

So, Friday, I got up super-early (noon), went out and got some shopping done, and then got to work on this costume.

I had draped the pattern that morning before going to bed. Had I been thinking more about it, I would have made the dress pattern in three pieces – bust, stomach, and skirt. Actually, had I been thinking about it, I probably would have just draped the dress on my dress form, because I knew those pleats were going to be finicky. But, well, hindsight.

I cut out and assembled my lining first. Thrifted cotton sheet – $1.

I thought the best way to assemble this thing would be to pleat my fabric first, and then cut out my pattern over it. This probably would have worked fairly well if my pattern didn’t have a bust dart. But I went ahead with it anyway.

I cut out the pattern pieces and stitched around the edges to keep the pleats in place. At this point it was still looking good to me. I did each piece – front left, front right, back left, and back right – one at a time, to keep things straight.

I wasn’t liking the way it was looking at this point, but I kept going.

I got everything assembled, threw a zipper in the back, and stitched on some gold trim I had bought. The pleats in the skirt are a little messy, but not so much so that I’ll spend time I don’t have trying to fix them. This dress is finished.

Yesterday, I took on the jacket.

I cut out my pieces, again being careful to get my colors and sides right… only to find out, after googling, that I had it wrong! When I made the dress, I did the pieces black-white-black-white, like a checkerboard. I didn’t realize until I was on the jacket that it was simply half-black, half-white – I made it a lot more complicated than it needed to be. Well, it was too late to start over on the dress, but I had to take the jacket apart and swap some pieces to get it right.

I used Wonder Under to get the black-and-white designs on the front and back of the jacket, and down the sleeves.

I drafted a sleeve pattern the way I usually do, and then assembled them.

I sewed right through the top of my sleeve by not paying attention – d’oh! I managed to steam most of the holes away, though. But they were really obvious in this fabric, which was white cotton broadcloth and black kona cotton – chosen mostly because they were on sale at JoAnn’s, but also I wanted something that would hold a nice pleat.

So, I added some of the same metallic gold trim as is on the skirt to the cuffs and collar, and this project was finished! Not bad for two days’ work! Actually, there are a lot of parts of this outfit I’m not happy with, but it’s unlikely I’ll have time to go back and correct mistakes. I’ll be spending tomorrow finishing the costume I started today, and then hopefully on Tuesday I can finish up some bits and pieces of other things that I’ve not yet gotten to. Then all that will be left will be little things like jewelry, accessories, etc.

I’m not done yet for today; I have two wigs to style before I go to bed… sigh. So much left to do! It’s only my own fault for waiting so long to start these costumes, but still!

Well, I didn’t get nearly as much done this week as I thought I was going to. I had two extra days off for a total of eight days – which seems like a lot of time, but it vanished pretty quickly! Although, I lost two whole days to being sick and I had a lot of chores to do, which ate up most of another day.

I meant to get this whole uniform taken care of this week, but so far, I’ve only got one piece done – the jacket.

So, I studied Lucia’s uniform as best I could given there aren’t a lot of pictures of it and it doesn’t get a lot of screen time in the game. I came up with a list of items to make to complete the outfit: a jacket, pants, boots (or possibly boot cuffs if I have a pair that works,) gloves, and that belt/loincloth type thing she’s wearing. I began with the jacket.

For this project I bought some black stretch sateen, which is a nice looking fabric with a nice sheen, and, bonus, it stretches! I threw together a quick pattern by draping on my dress form, and got to work. There’s no visible opening on the jacket in the picture, but it looks to be double-breasted, so I designed it that way; it comes to about hip-length, and is slightly tapered to a point in the back.

This was my back piece pattern. I added a little extra room to have a pleat at the center back. No other reason than that I though it would look kinda cool.

My mum has a lovely little BabyLock serger, which I don’t often make use of – I put a lining in nearly everything that I make, which eliminates the need to finish the edges. But I didn’t have the time, energy, proper fabric, or desire to line this jacket (I have a feeling it’s going to be hot underneath this and that cape, and I didn’t want to add to that if I didn’t have to) so I opted out of lining it, and serged all the seams instead. So quick and easy!

I was lax with the picture-taking again, but the construction went mostly the same way it always does – I sewed the front and back pieces together, and then drafted a basic sleeve pattern, and attached sleeves. I made a facing for the neckline, and hemmed all the other edges. Then I tried it on to mark out where my button holes would be.

Sewing button holes. Mine are obviously far from perfect, but they serve their purpose. I don’t know if I’ll ever get good at doing button holes and eyelets; mine are always just… a little bit off-looking.

I couldn’t really tell what kind of buttons she’s got on her uniform – they look kind of like they might be gold/red toggles, but there’s no way to tell. So I just grabbed some nice silver military-looking buttons instead.

Here’s the finished jacket, complete with buttons! It turned out quite nice, for something which will mostly not be seen…

I also threw together this belt/skirt/whatever thing she wears around her waist. It’s made of the black stretch sateen and some scraps of the red sateen I used for the cape, and hooks in the back. I’m not sure yet how I’ll get that stripe design or whatever it is on the front of it – I thought of embroidering it, but I’m not sure it will look the way I want. More likely I’ll find some matching fabric or ribbon and just tack it on.

Also, I stumbled upon this really neat app lately for cosplayers – Cosplanner.

It helps you to keep track of your costumes and projects, and I’m finding I like it a lot – It’s clearly designed for cosplayers, but I have ideas of using it for all my costuming projects. And it’s free, so that’s a win! Anyhow, you can see the ones I’m currently working on – all of my and my sister’s Anime-Zap! costumes are there. You can also see how not close to finishing I am overall, considering that this convention is in January – yikes! Having lists and percentages really helps me keep track of things, though, so this app was a great find. Up until now I just had pages and pages of checklists on my phone that I was trying to keep track of, and it was kind of a mess.

I made a change to my line-up for the convention, and instead of doing the Dark Althena costume from Lunar: Silver Star Story, I’ll be doing Lucia from Lunar: Eternal Blue instead.

There were a lot of reasons for this decision:

1. Despite trying a number of times to redesign the Dark Althena costume for modesty in a way that pleased me, I couldn’t come up with something I really liked, and honestly I dislike the idea of changing a design just to suit myself.

2. It’s going to be January in Chicago, and I really don’t want to be wearing next to nothing even if I plan to be inside the whole time.

3. I own Lucia’s pendant – the PSOne re-release of Lunar 2 had arguably one of the coolest box sets of any video game ever, and inside that box set, along with a whole bunch of other goodies, was a life-size official replica of Lucia’s pendant, which just made me wonder why in the heck I never considered this cosplay before in my life!

4. Lucia is badass, is any other reason needed?

This costume required some thought before I went about actually starting to make it. She doesn’t wear it for very long in the game and there aren’t really any good pictures of what the whole thing looks like (the bromide above is the best image you get of what she’s wearing.) How the cape looks under the neck/shoulder thing she’s wearing and how it fastens together is not really clearly seen.

There’s obviously an opening in the front, however it seems to overlap quite a bit – shoulder to shoulder, at least, because when she stands with her arms inside, there is no obvious opening. I sketched some designs, and came up with a basic design for a cape that is made of straight panels, gathered at the shoulders to give it volume, with some kind of a collar, that overlaps from shoulder to shoulder. I played with some old sheets on my dress form, and came up with a basic working pattern.

I used red cotton sateen for this cape – not a choice I’m entirely happy with in retrospect; I think I might have preferred something even heavier. I traced my pattern pieces onto the fabric, and then extended the shoulder width, to allow for room for pleating.

I pleated the shoulders on the cape back panel, which was one piece, and the two front panels, and then sewed them all together with french seams. I had to take in the shoulders a number of times because they were too big and gave this weird sort of balloony effect that I didn’t like. I think a heavier fabric would have hung better. Anyway, I just kept taking in my seams until it fell nicely from my shoulders.

For the collar, I just wanted to make a simple standing collar – it won’t be seen anyway underneath the neck piece/shoulder armor thing, whatever it is.

I was going to line the collar with some stiff canvas I had, but lo and behold, it was nowhere to be found… naturally! So instead, I cut two more strips of the sateen and stitched them to the inside – the stitch line is on the inside of the collar so it doesn’t bother me. Then I attached the collar, and hand tacked it down on the inside. The extra layers of fabric help it to stand quite nicely without flopping around.

Here’s the top of the cape, all finished – doesn’t look like much, does it? I put hooks in two places on the collar to keep it shut, since it overlaps almost the entire front half of the collar.

And here’s me, tiredly modeling the cape! Right now, it’s only pinned where it overlaps in the front, but I’m going to put some buttons there, probably the same ones I’ll put on the rest of the costume when I get around to making it.

So, I got something accomplished today, even if it wasn’t what I planned to! It gives me such a feeling of accomplishment to finish things in one day – I’ve broken up all my costume lists into small tasks that can be done in a day. It’s back to work tomorrow, but next week I’ll be tackling the black uniform that Lucia wears.

Ah, it feels so good to cross things off lists! Yesterday I tackled the white dress for my sister’s Megpoid cosplay.

Here, if you need reminding, is an image of the costume in question.

And here’s my version! I spent all day yesterday constructing the dress, but admittedly I was working pretty leisurely on it. The construction is simple and I probably could have finished in half a day.

I didn’t take many pictures of it during construction, but here’s a close up of the bodice and the inside of the bodice:

I drafted the pattern on my dress form, to my sister’s measurements. Since it’s a strapless dress, I built it more sturdily than my own. The inner layer is an old thrifted white sheet, the fashion layer is white peach skin, and it’s lined with white lining fabric. I added a hefty amount of boning (some industrial-size zip ties that my dad gave me for free; score!) There are two bones to each seam and some in between seam, as well. One thing I really hate sometimes is seeing a good costume – historical or otherwise – ruined by looking slummy because of a lack of proper undergarments/structuring. Stays and corsets are important for historical costuming, and I guess for me that carries over into modern costuming as well; the silhouette is important. So, anyway, that’s the reason for that. (Sorry for the spiel!)

The skirt is a half-circle. It took me some thinking to decide how to do the skirt of the dress, because the green petticoat was cut in a full circle only for fullness – I didn’t want the dress skirt to be that full. In the picture, it pretty much lays flat over the green fluff layer. So I played around with some fabric and the petticoat on my dress form until I decided that a half-circle would do.

And also…

A hat! I whipped this together in about ten minutes with some hot glue and an old black felt hat I happened to have laying around. The green flowers I had gone shopping for last week, and I went to every craft store in town to find what I wanted – but I was working off memory and didn’t have a picture of the costume with me, so maybe I was being more picky than I needed to be. Anyhow, none of the flowers I found were actually camellias, but they’re all a good close match. The flowers on the dress were bought for this project; the white flower on the hat and the crystals were bought a while back on clearance, as well as the green striped ribbon.

This project is essentially finished (“essentially finished” – my catchphrase) and it’s nice to have finally completed something! I’ve been working on bits and pieces of stuff but there’s a sense of accomplishment in having a costume all done. All I have left on this one is to add a bit more green tulle to the petticoat (or maybe I’ll add it to the white skirt itself) to cover that little gap where I pulled the skirt up to attach the flower.

I wanted to continue my sewing streak from last week and get started on my convention costumes right away yesterday. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anywhere to begin underneath the piles of UFOs I’ve got laying around – so I devoted two days to finishing up some almost-done but for some reason not-done projects I had on the table.

Last time I posted about this gown, I mistakenly called it taffeta? I’m not sure why I did that, but it is in fact satin. And while normally I avoid satin like the plague (I have a dislike of shiny fabrics) I had picked this dark navy blue satin up because it was on super-clearance and honestly, the shine was not too bad. That is, it doesn’t scream “costume satin!!” to me.

Anyhow, at last check, the gown was finished and just in need of trimming. It also, I found upon examination now two months later, was in need of hemming and some minor alterations about the sleeves. I whipped all that out yesterday.

I bought a bunch of rolls of this blue organza ribbon at the same time as I bought my fabric – also on clearance; 50 cents a roll! Unfortunately, I only got two rolls of the 2″ wide ribbon and have yet to be able to find more, and I used it all up on the neckline and front of the bodice. I intended to have trim also on the sleeves and more on the bodice, but when I ran out of the 2″ and started using 1″, it just didn’t look right to me. So I scrapped that and left the gown a little under trimmed – for now.

The lace is just tacked into the sleeve for effect; I intend to make some sleeve flounces also, since I have a good amount of the blue satin left.

There’s also…

A hat! I spent this morning making the hat, which I meant to do (and think I posted about doing) ages ago. It’s a straw hat from Michael’s with the crown cut down to a more shallow size. It’s covered with blue satin and the brim is lined with black silk moire (which I picked up nearly a whole yard remnant of at Hobby Lobby a while back – I’m always surprised at what I stumble across at Hobby Lobby!) The crown is trimmed with a strip of ruched and pinked blue satin, and I added a bow of ivory silk dupioni because I love bows. I adored the big silk bow on the hat that went with my Ciel ball gown, so I went with it again! I also had just enough of the ivory silk left to make a nice, long sash to tie around my waist, to bring the outfit together.

I took some white ostrich feathers I had laying around and gave them a nice tea bath in my favorite Lady Gray to make them more ivory-colored, and they’re just drying now so that I can throw them on this hat. And then it will be done! Excepting the sleeve flounces, this project is finished!

I still have lots and lots to do, but it’s nice to get one UFO off my list, especially since my list keeps growing with more and more things I’m finding I need for the convention. I want to try and go out this weekend to take some pictures in this costume, but we’ll see if there’s time. Also, it’s hella cold out right now, so I might have to save the wearing of this gown for a warmer time of year.

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